South Korean online shopping platform provider Café 24 Corp. expects its annual transaction value for this year to grow to 6.5 trillion won ($5.7 billion), just shy of the country’s current No. 2 online shopping platform provider’s thanks to growing popularity of Korean fashion and style.

Café 24, which provides e-commerce platform services ranging from designing online stores to opening and running e-commerce sites, currently commands 40 percent of the country’s online shopping mall market in terms of the number of online shopping malls using its e-commerce platform.

Last year, a total of 5.3 trillion won worth of transactions were made through Café 24’s e-commerce platform, and the total transaction value this year is expected to grow to 6.5 billion won, accounting for 10 percent of the country’s total e-commerce transaction value based on last year’s tallies, the company expected. The country’s top two online shopping mall platform services eBay Korea, owner of G Market and Auction, and 11st Street registered annual transaction worth 14 trillion won and 6.8 trillion won, respectively, last year.

Riding high on popular Korean pop culture, overseas sales of Korean online fashion malls running on Café 24 are expected overwhelm domestic sales, Lee Jae-suk, Café 24 chief executive, said during a recent interview with the Maeil Business Newspaper.

There are about 1.05 million online shop owners that run their business through Café 24’s e-commerce platform and nearly 60,000 of them are targeting customers outside home turf. To support its clients with international business, Café 24 offers foreign language translation and marketing services and has a partnership with 80 offshore e-commerce sites including global leaders Amazon, Alibaba, and Rakuten.

The country’s No. 3 e-commerce platform provider by transaction value is readying for a debut on the secondary Kosdaq market through the so-called Tesla act. Named after U.S.-based electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors Inc., the new system was launched by the Korea Exchange (KRX) in January this year to allow promising startups to join bourses even if they do not meet the regular capital and capacity requirements for an initial public offering (IPO).

After registering an operating profiting of 800 million won in the first quarter of this year ended March, Café 24 is expected to continue to report profits in the following quarter. Expectations are growing high that the company may swing to profits this year from a 2.1 billion won operating loss last year, likely recording its first-ever full-year operating profit. The company posted 101.8 billion won in sales for full 2016.

By Choi Seung-jin

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]